On Disaster
posted by on July 22 at 15:27 PM
Jonathan Chait’s criticisms of Naomi Klein’s bestseller The Shock Doctrine are accurate. Not one of his points misses its mark. I will briefly present and explain two direct hits.
1) On the matter of incompetence and its absence from her assessment of disaster prevention and response in North America.
With the pseudo-clarity of a conspiracy theorist, Klein dismisses out of hand the possibility of incompetence. There were memos warning the Army of looting [in Iraq], she ominously notes—scanting the possibility that bureaucratic lethargy, rather than conscious intent, prevented the memos’ warnings from being acted upon at ground level. That widespread bungling and mismanagement also followed Hurricane Katrina strikes Klein as proof of intentionality.
To believe that incompetence played no role in the way Iraq was handled after the fall of Saddam Hussein, and the way FEMA responded to Hurricane Katrina, is to imagine American power (in the form of Bush and the interests he represents) as possessing a strength that is supernatural. A mind that believes that (state/corporate) power is incapable of mistakes or miscalculations, and that all of the world’s happenings are the result of a plan that is executed with extraordinary success—this kind of mind is very weak. It’s essentially the mind of a slave. Furthermore, the slave’s belief in the terrific powers of his/her master, benefits (reinforces) the master, who in the slave’s eyes is what he (the master) believes himself to be: one who can do no wrong.
What must be critiqued is not disaster but incompetency. When it thrives, it thrives for a reason. That reason is almost always political.
The next point:
The notion that crises create fertile terrain for political change, far from being a ghoulish doctrine unique to free-market radicals, is a banal and ideologically universal fact. (Indeed, it began its dubious modern career in the orbit of Marxism, where it was known as “sharpening the contradictions.”) Entrenched interests and public opinion tend to run against sweeping reform, good or bad, during times of peace and prosperity. Liberals could not have enacted the New Deal without the Great Depression. Communist revolutions have generally come about in the wake of wars. The liberal economist Victor R. Fuchs once wrote that “national health insurance will probably come to the United States in the wake of a major change in the political climate, the kind of change that often accompanies a war, a depression, or large-scale civil unrest.”
This is completely true. The idea of “disaster capitalism” is empty sans the idea of “disaster socialism.” Social benefits (welfare, voting, labor, and civil rights) have mostly (if not exclusively) resulted from economic collapses/shifts/ruptures. Indeed, the left at this moment has been recharged by the general disaster of Bush’s environmental, economic, and military policies.
The real challenge for the left of our day is to somehow generate social progress from economic order rather than disorder.
Gee Chaz, if Mr. Chaitz' points are so gosh-darned accurate, they, um, would probably self-explanatory, then wouldn't they?
That's the problem with people who study too much philosophy; why use just a few thoughtful, well-chosen words to get a point across, when you can use endless pages of blather instead?
Oh, unfair, Comte. Charles is simply providing a little gloss for the two points (the slave mind part being trenchant), and you have to admit that in comparison to his Slog corpus, this is brief.
Very nice. The master is always weaker than the slave thinks. It only took one rifle and 3 bullets for one guy, without any help, to take down Kennedy.
Charles,
With all due, I gotta differ here with both you and Chait. I understood Klein as saying in TSD that, where unexpected crises such as natural disasters were once detrimental to capitalism, now capitalism has entered yet a new modern stage (post-Marx and, now, post-Debord) where it can actually benefit from the aftermath of such crises.
I don't think Klein's analysis necessarily implies "conspiracy" or rules "incompetence" out of the picture. But you gotta admit she's on the money (pun!) about how capitalism has benefited from such events as Katrina, the South Asian tsunami, etc. much more profoundly than it could have not too many decades ago.
As for the ideal corollary to "disaster capitalism," check out the following quote, relayed by Klein in a Sept. 2007 interview with Jeremy Scahill:
"If they have disaster capitalism, then we need disaster collectivism." --Saket Soni, an organizer with the New Orleans Workers Center
Now, how about that, now?
In what way did "capitalism" benefit from Katrina? That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. Did a few companies profiteer? Of course; they always do. Hardly restricted to capitalism, either. Naomi Klein is a fool, and if anything SHE is the one cheered by disasters like Katrina. Her whole schtick is cheering on the total destruction of civilization.
Fnarf @5,
Among other ways, Katrina opened up a great opportunity for the privatization of public resources and services in New Orleans.
I'll let the imprescindible Ms. Klein defend herself on this one.
Klein's piece is pure fantasy. She appears to be willfully ignorant of the reality of post-flood (or pre-flood) New Orleans.
Klein is one of that special kind of liberal who WANTS poor blacks to be poor and locked up in substandard housing. The fact is, for many of the poorest people of New Orleans, getting the hell out of that city is the best thing that ever happened to them; they get to be part of America now. Thinking that fancy houses and condos are the real threat is insane.
#7. Maybe your problem with her is that she's not a liberal. She's not "one of these liberals," she's a genuine leftist- like me.
#7 btw: calling Klein's piece pure fantasy isn't a refutation.
I think that the term that applies most here is not "incompetence", but "willful (i.e., intentional) neglect." There was a purposeful reluctance to respond to the Katrina crisis, at all levels of government.
In other words, you can't fuck up that badly.
I'm totally down with incompetence over conspiracy (Bush & co. conspiracies are being found out, as conspiracies tend to be, whereas incompetence goes on and on).
I would add to point 1, that the slave benefits from conspiracy thinking in that it gives order and meaning to the world, even if that world is viewed as evil.
To quote Fairbairn on the thinking of abused children: "better to be a sinner in a world ruled by God than to live in a world ruled by the Devil"
however in this case the sinner is the helpless conspiracy theorist, the God is Bush & co. and the devil is a world without order.
The real challenge for the left of our day is to somehow generate social progress from economic order rather than disorder.
You call this economic order? Nah, Charles. Banks collapsing left and right and we're not even close to the trough of the housing market popping?
The real question is whether the left is prepared to take advantage of economic disorder under Barack Obama or, god forbid, John McCain. Are we going to be ready to pressure him from the left and build movement out of this? We can't afford another Jimmy Carter.
It's interesting that the civil rights movement for African-Americans took place during the Ozzie and Harriet era of postwar prosperity. Of course I don't believe for a minute that whites outside the South jumped on the pro-civil rights bandwagon out of noble motives, but it was very easy for someone in, say, Seattle to take the moral high ground since it didn't matter a single bit to them whether blacks in Alabama could ride the bus in whatever seat they chose. And looking at the fat redneck sheriffs on the TV news every night bleating their ridiculous ideas gave other whites a sense of moral superiority. I believe the reason was that northern whites were secure enough in their jobs and economic situations not to be threatened by extending rights to a segment of the population who had been denied them for centuries. And the southern blacks themselves looked around at the American dream being realized for so many others and demanded their right to participate in it. What both had in common was the idea that the pie is big enough for all to share. I don't think the achievements of that period could have been accomplished earlier during the Depression or later during the inflation/energy crisis/oil embargo '70s.
Contrast that to the working class whites who are threatened by immigration. One of their talking points is "They're taking our jobs!!!" That's bullshit, of course, but they wouldn't be thinking that if they weren't worried about their own jobs. Same for affirmative action. If your kid can't get into a good school, easier to blame it on "minority quotas" than the politicians who cut education funding. There is nothing those at the top like better than to pit those at the bottom against each other, fighting over the scraps that are thrown to them. Bad economic times mean scapegoating, for some. But when people feel economically secure they will be less susceptible to bigoted demagogues and real social progress can be made.
1) The prevalence of Cost-plus contracts for well connected corporations in Iraq and New Orleans says it all: the incompetence is expected and little effort is made to root it out unless it becomes politically untenable.
2) Charles, are you fucking on qualudes or something here? Did you fucking read Klein's book? She never denies that crisis and disaster times have created opportunities for other movements besides capitalist greed. Her point is that the captians of modern capitalism expect and plan for these situations far in advance and have no shame in jumping into take advantage of the defenseless to move forward their ideological and economic goals. She clearly would like the liberals and left to be ready to do the same, but they aren't. Personally, I would like it if the left held the line at not sowing the chaos themselves as the Cheney led Iraq invasion certainly did.
Her example of Milton Friedman's last living initiative before his death being pushing the privatization of New Orleans schools when the families of children there were least able to make their voices heard shows how cold blooded and heartless these thugs can be.
...and adverse to democracy.
Jeff Stevens is on the mark.
Fnarf is an idiot (I'm using his style of argumentation here). Verbosity and ad hominem aren't much in the way of refutation, Fnarf.
Mudede:
You're taking a surprisingly ahistorical approach to Klein's thesis, which is not present in her book. She links the success of capitalism in the wake of disasters (in the form of increased privatization of public resources) to formal planning initiated by the likes of Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics. This isn't "conspiracy theory"; this is conspiracy in the proper sense of the term. There was intentional planning that seized on "real or perceived" crises.
Like Jeff Stevens, I do not think she eliminates the role of incompetence in her argument. In fact, failure due to incompetence at the governmental level can likely help spread this form of privatization as it shows the "need" for the efficiency of the market. It borders on the strategic.
And "a weak mind", Charles? Jesus. How arrogant are you? I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt when commenters threw around the 'misogynist' label, but will have to reconsider.
I just thought you were a poor man's Zizek. Or an idiot's Lacan.
Dumbest post I've read today.
WRT to the incompetence dodge in Iraq, it's been well known for millenia that an invading army must take over the tasks of civil government- and if they fail to do so, one result will be a background noise of insurrection. Armies are not liberal sleep-overs where campers who make mistakes say they're sorry and have learned a lesson. Armies are authoritarian, and if the people in charge don't do their job, you have to court-martial them, or you end up with a bunch of incompetents giving orders.
As for the second point, we learn that Klein was right after all (whoda thunkit?), so right that her theory is also supported by experience of progressivism. Wow, that's some rebuttal there, Charlie.
Comments Closed
Comments are closed on this post.